Tag: feline oral melanoma

The margins are CLEAR!!!

/ Margaret / 5 Comments

Peekaboo, my 11-year-old cat, is such a star. Our amazing little star…And yes, in case you’re wondering, all of these photos are recent, post-surgery photos. Obviously, her right side looks better than her left, as you can see…But once her fur grows back, she’ll be as good as new (not that that’s the most important thing, of course!).

Here’s the most important thing:

Our vet just called to let us know that the final results of Peekaboo’s mandibulectomy (half of her lower left jaw was removed) show CLEAR MARGINS.

In other words, no cancer cells were found in the outer portion of her jaw, the portion that was removed. Had that happened, if even a few cancer cells had been found, it would not have been good news at all…

I have to confess that I got all choked up on the phone and could barely speak to the vet. Tears of happiness.

This has been such an emotional journey for Stefano and me. Just a few weeks ago, when this awful cancer was found in her mouth, by chance!, we didn’t know what to do: should we agree to the surgery? Is surgery the right decision for Peekaboo? What about her quality of life afterwards? Would she be able to eat without half her lower left jaw? We had so many questions…and so few answers.

But in the end, based on her test results, specifically her second CAT (hah) scan, we agreed to go ahead with the surgery. And now I’m so glad we did…

And yes, she is eating on her own again, eating like a horse, as you can see…

This final biopsy result doesn’t mean that Peekaboo will never have a recurrence of this beastly cancer…

But we’re not thinking about that now…

We’re celebrating today’s victory…

And she’s back to chasing her video mice again…

Quick update on Peekaboo

/ Margaret / 1 Comment

I took our cat, Peekaboo, to the vet two days ago, around lunchtime. When her new CAT scan results came in, my vet told me that, even though the melanoma had spread a bit in the past two weeks, the cancer hadn’t gone into the jawbone yet. She recommended that we do the surgery.

After asking a few obvious but almost-impossible-to-answer questions (will the surgery PROLONG HER LIFE without impacting her QUALITY OF LIFE, blablabla), I called Stefano, and we both agreed it was our only choice at this point, even though there really aren’t any guarantees: this sort of cancer is very aggressive, so it may come back at some point…

But if we’d waited until, say, September, it would have been too late to do anything. And by then she would been suffering a lot…bleeding from her mouth, etc. I’ve seen the photos online…It’s nasty.

We had to try removing the blasted thing…

In a nutshell: the surgery went well. No complications. Now we just have to wait until she’s well enough to come home. That will happen once she begins eating on her own, which is going to take a few more days…

Yesterday Stefano and I went to see her twice, at lunchtime and just before dinner. I braced myself, expecting her to look like a little Frankenstein, but no, she actually looks the same (see photo). Not that we care what she looks like, of course! As long as she’s okay…

She’s not a happy camper, as perhaps you can tell from the photo. She’s NOT in any pain, of course, but I think the Elizabethan collar is driving her bonkers. Plus, the painkiller/sedative is making her live in a world of her own. I don’t know how much she even knew that we were there…

My job is to get her to eat on her own again. So at one point I put some mushy food on my finger and offered it to her. She turned her head, growling (growling? My Peekaboo???), got up and moved away. Who can blame her? Poor sweetie. I didn’t insist. I’ll try again today. As soon as she begins eating on her own, we can bring her home, where she will be happier and recover more quickly, for sure.

I just hope the vet surgeon was able to get all of that blasted thing, that no cells escaped, and that there will be no recurrences…

One day at a time.

It’s not just malignant. It’s very aggressive.

/ Margaret / 5 Comments

All of Peekaboo’s test results are in (see my July 4 post; Peekaboo is one of our cats…11 years old…I took the above photo of her in 2015).

The biopsy confirmed the diagnosis of an aggressive malignant oral melanoma.

I won’t go on and on about all the discussions Stefano and I (and friends and family) have had in the past couple of weeks, especially this past weekend…all the going back and forth (surgery…or no surgery???), all the online research we’ve done, reading horrible stories on various cat forums, the heartbreak, the anxiety…”what should we DO???”…

You can imagine all that…

We haven’t been sitting around…doing nothing but talk, I mean. In addition to speaking with the oncologist and the vet surgeon at our own vet hospital, last week we sent her test results to a well-known oncology specialist vet( outside of Florence) who called us on Saturday, recommending we go ahead with the surgery.

Even with that second opinion, I still didn’t want to put her through all that misery…the pain…the risks of doing this surgery…etc. During the weekend, talking things over with Stefano’s aunt (also a cat lover) and his cousins, I decided to let Nature take its course: palliative care…curcumin…pain killers…But no surgery. Definitely absolutely NO SURGERY. How do you explain to a kitty that she’ll have to undergo such a painful procedure blablabla? You can’t. It’s not fair, I decided. She might never recover…never be able to eat properly again…and then she will die anyway, eventually…So WHY do it? Those were all the things rushing through my mind this past weekend.

But what happened today changed my mind. This morning I took Peekaboo to see another vet surgeon, highly recommended, at a clinic here in Florence. He went through her tests very carefully and calmly and told me that, if this were HIS cat, he’d go ahead with the surgery. I still wasn’t completely on board, though…

Until we looked into her mouth…

I’d seen the melanoma almost two weeks ago, when it was just a tiny oval on the side of her gum. Well, it’s not an oval now, and it’s not tiny, either. In just two weeks it has spread quite a bit. Now you can see the blasted thing clearly. It’s growing.

It freaked me out, I have to admit.

I took Peekaboo home and decided I needed to discuss this new bit of information with our vet and the main vet surgeon over at the vet hospital. I was there within a half hour. I told them both what I’d seen this morning in her mouth, and here’s what we agreed to do (we = all of us, Stefano included, of course…Oh my poor sweetheart, getting all this awful news while at work!):

I’ll take Peekaboo to the hospital day after tomorrow (which happens to be my birthday…I hope it brings her luck!). The vets will do another CAT scan to see how much the tumor has spread. Then we will decide what should be done.

  1. If the blasted thing has spread TOO much, meaning that a manibulectomy would impair her QOL, then I’ll just take her home, and we’ll go with the palliative care option. Right now the tumor isn’t bothering her: she’s eating (even dry food), playing, purring, etc.
  2. If, as we hope, something can be done to give her a good QOL for quite some time, we’ll go ahead with the surgery.

Whatever the choice, it’s going to be hard on all of us…first and foremost, on Peekaboo, of course, but also on Stefano and me. And I can’t help but still ask myself: are we doing the right thing? Or rather, are we doing the right thing FOR HER?

To be honest, right now I don’t have an answer…

Incidentally, I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who might have had this sort of experience with their cat. Thank youuuuuuu!